


The Oxpecker on the Buffalo's Back

by komodobits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel inhabiting Dean's body, F/M, M/M, a lot of pining, or kind of just along for the ride, poemfic, some alcoholism and mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3421307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komodobits/pseuds/komodobits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(poemfic) Death rides in an old cream car and takes who he wants, but simply letting go is for the tired and hopeless, and Castiel is neither. He takes the nearest vessel available, and he holds on for as long as he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Oxpecker on the Buffalo's Back

**Author's Note:**

> this a pretty old poemfic I wrote back when I first joined fandom, so it's been floating about on tumblr for a while, but I wanted to put it up here to preserve it, because I'm sentimental like that. sorry for the weird freestyle-ness.

**I**

**The Fading**

**  
**Death rides in an old cream car

with polished rims and leather seats

and he stoops low like herons praying

to kiss Castiel’s brow

and plants a mark there.

 

It goes unseen.

 

Suns rise; shadows lengthen;

Sammy laughs and sips lukewarm beer, and

Dean holds Castiel in the flickering light

of a burning body -

presses lips to his lips and

his eyes and

his forehead and

tastes the salt of darkness there but

 

the mark goes unseen.

 

Castiel withers.

 

Skin sagging, greying

over his bones, eyesight fraying

to loose dark threads between

here and the horizon,

fingers knot and curl into claws

to twist into blankets.

 

In a moment of weakness,

of selfish grabbing hands

and claiming teeth,

Castiel says,  _never let me go_

 

and that is the mistake.

 

Jimmy Novak has died a thousand times,

beautiful battered marionette of

twisted strings and rotting wood,

but it has never been

like this.

 

Dean whispers

_what if I held you so close there was no room for the shadows to creep in_

_what if the space between your lungs was the shape of my being_

_what if your every rib is a battering ram too fierce to be Trojan_

_crashing through walls and ripping down portraits and neat wood panelling_

_to be with me_

 

Castiel whispers

_I don’t have ribs_

_I am—_

_a whirlwind of thunder and faith_

Dean says

_yeah - I know_

_and love_

Castiel’s hands press crooked, gnarled,

into the hollow of Dean’s throat

where his blood beats hard and aching and very, very

_don’t forget that part_

Dean kisses him breathless –

not difficult these days, as Castiel

wheezes splutters rattles –

and remembers

 

and that is the mistake.

 

The last of Castiel’s sight is spent on

a smeared hotel mirror

the parched bruise caverns under eye sockets

the waxy white spreading its fingers over his pupils

the worried press of Dean at his shoulder.

 

The last of Castiel’s legs are spent on

tracing steps to Bobby’s

stumbling on uneven floorboards

falling into the bed where he will die

moving against Dean in the warm and the dark and pretending not to know.

 

The last of Castiel’s breath is spent on

goodbyes

promises

_I love you I love you I love you I love you_

and Dean

remembers

Castiel’s moment

of weakness

and clings to it.

_—but it’d work, wouldn’t it?—_

_—please, Dean—_

_—you told me never to let you go and I don’t intend to—_

when the life of a child is threatened,

a mother is capable of lifting the heavens.

when the life of a sweetheart is threatened,

a lover is capable of feats of strength

feats of stamina

burning buildings to the ground.

when the life of a vessel is threatened –

 

Bobby has a theory.

 

Castiel tried to refuse a long time ago

but he had been too busy

coughing blood and acid and embers.

Now he is weak

and he is tired

and his blindfold is itchy

and Dean’s hand is warm, calloused, in his

 

and when Dean cries

and says, one last time:

_take me_

Castiel says  _yes_

 

and that is the mistake.

 

**II**

**The Awakening**

Dean Winchester is thirty-three years old.

He has glass-green eyes;

straight white teeth; a baby mouth;

a waltz of freckles across the bridge of his nose;

heavy shoulders; broad brown hands –

 

and when Castiel falls into his skin like a wingless bird

with a crash

a gasp and

a howl of light to tear the earth asunder

 

the first thing that he sees is his own dead body

and he knows that everything has changed.

 

Jimmy Novak is cold as the fallen silence,

mouth dim and slack. Sam and Bobby

flicker wary eyes over every new, familiar inch –

the build all Dean, the carry Castiel,

the cuckoo’s egg.

 

Fraudulent to the very atom, fingers clench and uncurl

like new spring blossoms, frangipani edges still tinged pink with rebirth.

Dean’s vision is cloudy at the edges; his blues are greys;

Castiel did not know he needed glasses.

Then the mouth opens, the tongue rolls

and the low drawl comes:

_well, that was weird._

and it is not Castiel’s doing.

 

Sam asks the question first:

_where_

_is_

_Cas_

and there is a hot winding blow of

realisation to Castiel’s gut, a pain that

is not his.

 

_I don’t know._

 

Castiel could weep because Dean is alive

or

Castiel could weep because he is not

 

but it is better than he expected

and he is happy to be the shadow

snared at the back of Dean’s heels

to trail his every sweep and motion

if he can see him

 

It’s disconcerting – the whirl of the world as Dean stands,

the shift in gravity, simple polar balance, and

nothing to do with Castiel at all –

the loftier view across the old dark room;

the extra three inches, the extra twelve pounds –

the way he staggers to the cracked bathroom mirror

mounted between the photos of

the Rockies, the ocean, the dusty Grand Canyon,

and the bigger, important things like

the time Sam dared Dean to wear lipstick

and he pressed magenta kisses to leave

a different mark on Castiel’s brow.

 

The reflection is Dean on any other day

and for a second Castiel thinks that

maybe there he is, the twisting light refracting through the iris

there he is, the dappled gold, the rings of green

or there -

 _there_  -

a darkness that could only be the corruption

of clipped wings and blackened Grace

but maybe

that’s just the earth

still spinning.

 

_Cas_

Dean presses his hands to the smeary glass

_you’re supposed to be commandeering my meatsuit you lazy asshole_

leaning into the sink

wet t-shirt

_what the fuck are you playing at_

fingers stretched wide enough that the joints ache

like he could push straight through

into another world where Castiel is more than

a dust spindle hurricaning in the back of his mind

with a roar like I love you

_where are you_

and Castiel tries to throw himself into

the pound of fists or the crunch of knuckles

anything

_can you hear me_

_Cas_

Dean’s hands drift

a solid plane of muscle, flesh, skin;

digs his fingertips in deep and angry

as though to tear open his ribcage

and find Castiel lingering in his hollow of his chest

 

there is nothing

 

he is not folded into the walls of his lungs

not the scattering of cells

not the beat of blood through the body that love built up from dirt

when he was no more than a cinder-smudge on the devil’s doorstep –

but under Dean’s hand is a ridge

where Castiel remembers sucking a bite,

purple, swollen, to last long after he has gone

although he is

still here.

 

_Cas you dumb son of bitch_

_we’re not done here_

there is the growl of anger, of loss

and Castiel feels the throat that is not his

tighten painfully

and choke

_I wasn’t supposed to lose you_

_you weren’t supposed to die_

 

Castiel screams

and screams

 

like a moth in Dean’s mouth

rotting

but very much alive

 

and the earth keeps spinning.

**III**

**The Weeping**

They burn Jimmy Novak on a wet Tuesday afternoon

and for the longest time, the wood and the body,

wrapped up tight like a newborn baby

in dusty canvas, will not light. It takes

a whole gallon of kerosene and

Sam trying not to cry – failing –

before he catches

and Castiel watches from the back of Dean’s skull

as his borrowed humanity

cracks

peels

splinters

and becomes charcoal.

 

Bobby says a few words, takes off his cap.

Sam says he forgives him, says thank you, says I’m sorry.

Dean says nothing.

There is a perpetual thrum of heaviness under Dean’s skin

and Castiel could not be sure if it is him

or just

the memory of him.

 

This is week one.

 

Whiskey is an unfamiliar taste

but in the coming days

and nights –

the mornings and early afternoons,

the dark and the dawn and the

beginning again

and the deep, echoing spaces of every other hour

he tastes it on Dean’s tongue,

hot, sharp, bitter.

 

Castiel raps on the edges of Dean’s bones,

the sag of his weary spine, and says

_darling put the bottle down_

and somewhere a sash

window bangs in a

breeze that was

not there but

Dean takes

another pull.

 

This is week two.

 

Every time Dean breathes, the sound is

the slow burn of a house fire

the creak and groan of a sinking ship

the whistle of the wind through storm shelters

where the wood has cracked, rupturing wallpaper florals

and dropping family portraits to the floor

of weddings that were not his.

 

This is week three.

 

They go on hunts – poltergeist; shapeshifter; shtriga -

and Dean is reckless as dry-mouthed dust-bowl tornadoes

in the blood spray and lamplight.

One night he doesn’t even load his gun

and the raw hammering of invisible fists

behind his eyes, howls trapped between his teeth,

cannot make him push the bullets in…

but the hunt is easy

and Sam is careful

and regrettably, Dean survives.

 

This is week four.

 

There are second-hand duffel bags full of third-hand clothes

Metallica t-shirts, ragged too-big jeans

with  _D.W_ stitched into the seams

and  _Castiel_ worn into the hems where they dragged under his feet –

his vessel was only small

and human.

Two lovers in four limbs realise at the same time

that in six billions years

Castiel has never had a possession of his own.

 

This is week five.

 

The last thing to go

is an old tattered trenchcoat but

go it does.

 

Castiel has grown accustomed to

the suffocating press of grief against his eyesockets;

the slow and painful drag of blood through veins,

almost  a coil of metal tangled low there

to unwind and untwist and catch

on the way to pulling up free through his wrists

to the sky, the closed eyes, the shattered sunrise

that Dean thinks only he can see;

the way a harsh Enochian battlesong,

promising torment and agony,

rises up from Dean’s lips when he’s alone –

not understanding the words, but

understanding the way that Castiel’s voice

rose and fell soft in the lullaby gloom of bedrooms.

 

In the cavernous gap in Dean’s soul

where Castiel sits, he hums along, ever silent,

the oxpecker unseen on the buffalo’s back,

and weaves the shimmer-shadows of his being

into every part of Dean that he can reach

because he will not be leaving

anytime

 

This is the rest of their lives.

**IV**

**The Burdening**

Three years after Castiel is reduced to

spiderwebbing between Dean’s memories

and the dutiful one-two-three of his heart,

Dean meets the girl that he will marry.

Castiel knows this

because she grins as wide as a halcyon afternoon -

because she knows what a carburettor is, and what it does -

because she has blue eyes -

 

and mostly importantly of all,

because she understands that one day a year

Dean will sit on the edge of the double bed,

back turned so he thinks the world can’t see

and he will fall apart.

She will touch his neck with affection and uncertainty;

she will murmur that some loves never die.

 

From the smokescreen shred of

Dean’s tired lungs, Castiel thinks

how right she is.

 

Sometimes

they sleep together –

Dean, the beautiful girl, and Castiel

unable to close his eyes

unable to shut his ears

to the incoherent babble of

filthy endearments

and the flutter of her heart

against their chest like an insect,

baby-winged and safe.

 

Sometimes they go for dinner

with Sam to real restaurants

with napkins and silverware

and forty-dollar wine.

They play at being normal and

Sam crumples with smiles and sadness,

saying  _this is the happiest Dean’s ever been_

and Castiel’s every scrambled fibre stings

with the injustice of it –

 

they had the weight of Judgement Day

counting every sunrise as the last

the infinity of familial failures

and self-loathing heavy like a loaded gun

but their kisses didn’t mean any less.

 

Sometimes they hunt

—and only sometimes—

but those are the harder days

because they fall like leaves and drop their guns

and turn, wide-mouthed in fear and expectancy,

for the crackle and rustle of wings and power

and the opening of the heavens

to save them

 

and Castiel

can’t.

 

It is a Thursday evening

and it is raining outside when

Dean drops to one knee, flips the hinge on a tiny velvet box

_you mean the world to me – will you-_

 

and then

then his lips stop moving

and then

then the world stills around him

because

because his eyes fall past her to the hallway mirror

where he can see himself

and he can see

 

_Cas—_

 

the beautiful girl stammers her confusion,

still fixed on the dainty white ring and

the wrong name tumbling out of Dean’s mouth

 

there are no apologies or excuses for this.

He’s a bad person, a bad boyfriend, but he only says

 _can you give me a minute_  and then he’s gone

 

out the door

into the darkness.

 

The door bangs once behind him before

settling in its comfortable, suburban hinges

and the wood on wood is a gunshot,

thunderous, tearing a fresh hole  through

the wound that Castiel never had.

 

Dean walks

 

even though their bones claw for

the mattress reward due from a long day’s work;

even though the thunder of blood under his shirts

says run fast and never look back;

even though Castiel drags cold spectrum fingers

over the ridged walls of his ribcage and

says  _go back to her_

_she’s more than I am._

 

The night above them is a culmination

of every galactic movement up to this one,

the Pleiades; Orion and Artemis;

and still raining.

 

Dean walks

 

until the state-lines and highways,

the barbed-wire borders and expanses of red dirt,

tell him that if he turned around now,

he would not make it back

to that dull, pretty girl

by morning

if he tried

 

and that is far enough.

 

Dean stops walking.

 

He is a hollow and stretched-out thing

of skin and nothing more substantial;

he is filled to the bottleneck

with sea-salt and starlight and shelter,

and he is empty.

 

_You’re still here._

Tipping his head back to let rainwater

collect in his eyes like a cleansing,

Dean simply says

 

_You’ve been here this whole time_

_haven’t_ _you?_

 

Castiel fights anew against the tangled cat’s cradle

of Dean’s fingertips, his smooth scarred knuckles,

pushes flat phantom hands against that skull,

and reaches out with urgent invisibility to touch

the untouchable.

 

Dean shivers, once.

_Look at me, Cas—_

_look at who I’ve staggered into—_

 

he laughs, twice.

_I’m wearing a suit and a tie_

_and it isn’t even identity theft—_

he chokes, three times.

_and I have a life and a lease and a love_

_and I don’t want any of it_

_without--_

 

Castiel touches his forehead to the muscle

at the jut of Dean’s hip, the curve of his thigh,

the cant of his shoulders, the brunt of his loss.

He stretches into every cell that he can find

and throws himself forwards into the

battering of fists splintering of bone scratching of voice

harder than he has ever tried before

because he just wants tell Dean that

everything is going to be okay.

 

Wolves howl less than a mile away

mounted on separate rocky peaks

in a unanimous and suffocating darkness,

and Castiel wonders if he is neither of two lone wolves

nor the strangled eerie cry

but the infinite stretch of sky

and the nothing.

**V**

**The Treading**

The morning of Dean’s fiftieth birthday,

he wakes at five A.M to red skies, filtering through

the bedroom blinds like the soft wash of blood.

Curled into the crook of his elbow is

the beautiful girl: lips thinning, crow’s feet,

but still as plain and lovely as the day,

the brown-flecked sparrow with whom

he made his nest. She is asleep. She is warm.

She is secondary.

 

Castiel wakes when he does, of course -

flutters sleepily behind Dean’s eyelids, chrysalis unfurling –

but first things first. Dean reaches for

his wire-rimmed glasses

his migraine medication

his little red pills…

and the weight of Castiel’s presence –  _imagined_ –

inside his skull fades to white noise,

a crackle or - no.

 

Dean knows now

  _knows_

that there is

nothing there.

 

Dean stretches, toes cracking.

The square, sterile refusal of the box

where his pills sit is a curse

and he tries not to remember the day

he walked straight in, sat down,

took medical attention by the lapels and said

_the man I love is trapped inside my bones_

_and I can’t get him out._

 

Castiel tries not to remember.

 

They sit

together and a lifetime apart

on the front porch steps,

creased hands swilling the whiskey bottle

that their wife does not know about

around and around and around.

They sip,

Castiel relishing the taste of

an old grief, half-forgotten, and rolling it

on his borrowed tongue until

it is so stale and poisoned that he could only

spit it out – and yet he does not.

They see

the sun crawl free of the horizon,

tiptoe over  a town that would not exist

but for the last-ditch efforts of a

shrapnel boy and a broken bird,

soldiers built up to be invincible by

more love than sense. Dean’s fingers curve

on the plywood decking steps, as if

following the shape of a hand.

They soar

 

until the clatter of a screen-door shoots them down.

 

Five years old, with bottle-green eyes, buckled legs, and milk teeth,

Dean’s daughter has made him breakfast.

 

The fried-egg eyes wilt and ooze greasy from the edges;

the bacon is more strain than smile - but

kisses are expected and  _sweetheart thank you baby_

and tooting raspberry burbles against soft tummies.

He always obliges her. She is the stardust

where his second narrow-limbed shadow is sunshine

or the absence

 

There are:

cards

confetti

spangly streamers

a voicemail from Sam

 

and Castiel, ever exhausted, slumps back against their cerebellum

to fiddle idly through old scrapbook memories,

holding onto the buzz of endorphins when Dean would _look_ at him

—eyes on eyes and bitten mouth and mess of hair, long bony hands—

and remarking on the deteriorative way of things

like the curl of photographs

the sepia fade

the blur of ink and edges until

the Rockies, the ocean, the spray of seabirds

are indistinguishable;

until one body is inextricable from the other,

but what the hell -

Castiel is used to that.

 

Gifts are wrapped in crinkling paper and carefully unshelled,

oyster and pearl, because all things now have

precious glittering secrets trapped

behind their muscles and bulwarks.

The present is a double-barrel shotgun:

antique, polished, lacking salt-stains.

The beautiful girl says she saw it and

thought of Dean; thought maybe he’d like

to take up hunting.

 

Dean laughs.

The backs of his eyes sting fiercely

and he drags a hand over his mouth

because - what a generous thought.

By now, Castiel has familiarised himself with

the sinking weight of aching insincerity on Dean’s tongue

the flicker-shuttering of ancient haunts:

 

sit down for lunch, egg-and-cress sandwiches cut into fours –

 

_and sitting lazy, cross-legged, backs against motel walls_

_to pass around cheap booze and knock back fear._

_Armageddon is tomorrow;_

_today is the clank of bottles_

_the wheeze of laughter, foreign in Cas’ throat_

_the sloppy, burning press of mouths—_

watch TV re-runs of shows that Dean never saw the first time,

the beautiful girl laughing loud and high

the baby child pushing a tin Chevy over

rucked-up carpeting—

_Cas shoving primal, brutal fists into Dean’s clothing_

_to bracket him against brick walls, all teeth and blood and anger –_

haul out humming machines of rickety domesticity

mow the lawn, trim the hedges, burn no bodies –

_and a pyre in the back-yard._

This is when Dean flinches;

drinks a little more.

 

six P.M

Dean and his little dollie family spoon out

potato salad in the back garden, facing the sun.

 

seven P.M

Dean washes his dishes, careful of his wedding ring

and the pink knot of scar where an old devil

tore straight through.

Castiel remembers the twist of those sinews,

the delicate row of yawning stitches, jagged black teeth,

and the doing of it.

 

Sam said once,

 

time is something worried about only by

the slow and dying

 

sometimes

Dean wonders

which he is.

 

eight P.M

bed-time for blessed darlings

covers tucked up to the chin

and Dean tells his baby girl about

the meaning of love and

the price of it.

He is not talking about her mother.

 

nine P.M

_I’ll be right up, love_

and the words are hollow in his mouth.

 

ten P.M.

Dean takes his pills.

 

eleven P.M

Dean sits on the porch steps, darkness sweeping in

to fill his body as he parts his lips, breathes steady and slow.

The night is soft; the lights are out; the house is closed;

there is a lonely, ephemeral cicada song

in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

They sit side-by-side and never touch, drinking the same whiskey.

 

Castiel wonders if the bacterium has ever loved the host cell

if cancer was once a beloved

and if there is a place in heaven

for either of them

beside their bodies.

**VI**

**The Remembering**

Some days Dean is a halogen bulb,

golden and fearless like the old days.

Other days he is soft and dim

and more a phantom than the rattle in his skull

 

On one of those days,

when they are ambling over causeways

arms laden with fruit and bleach and baby food,

Dean considers a scatter of magpies

 

and Castiel sees the car first.

 

It is, strangely enough, a

Chevrolet Impala –

but a newer model, a waxy blue,

and driving fast.

 

_no—_

 

Castiel claws bloody at the back of Dean’s brow

howls fit to burst ear-drums and

throws himself backwards

ricocheting from spinal cords, the fragile curve of graying ribs,

the tired, veteran muscle, the heartbeat

 

_no—_

but his fleeting momentum has no impact on the direction Dean takes

or the falling step from the safety of sidewalks, the cradle of tarmac

 

_no—_

or the arthritis click of his swollen knee

on the way

down

 

_no no no no no_

_Dean—_

The car hits them like a cyclone

 

and they spin like one too

off the bonnet of the Chevy to settle

on the asphalt

face-down and

 

Castiel cannot move his arms his legs his hollow chest

cannot lift Dean’s head to cup cold cheeks in curling hands and peer into pupils

cannot lift his head

at all - but

 

they are still breathing;

their heart is still beating

 

A horn is blaring and a woman’s words are shrill with panic:

 

_is he moving?_

_oh my god_

_is he moving?_

 

corpuscule, haematid, lymphocyte swallowing whole

and scuttling hungry under the skin -

Castiel can feel the corruption of cloying lethargy in every cranny,

the tangled veins rotting into corners, the black mould spray.

Knowing the buckled skeleton as well as he does,

Castiel can feel the trickle and bleed of everything they are

falling apart in the dark, secret spaces which can’t be seen.

 

The worst part is being awake when Dean is not

because that’s the wrong way around

lesion to figure to form

cavity to chassis

taking over ground control.

 

careful hands reach him and tilt him up to face the sun,

eyes open, searing bright through cataracts, but he

cannot flinch and when he is asked questions he

cannot speak and when they ask if he is alright, he

 

is not.

 

Castiel can only lie crumpled as strange, unfamiliar fingers sweep his brow

he can only cry  _get up get up get up_

because he can hear radio silence inside all their shared hollows

where there should be the chatter of sadness and pop culture

and a hundred other things

he can hear every falter of Dean’s heart

the cardiovascular question of whether to keep going

whether it is worth it

and Castiel screams yes yes please

_get up get up get up_

 

There – again –

Dean’s heart stutters twice in his ribcage

coughs and stumbles

misses a beat.

Castiel’s whole being swells to envelop it,

to shelter it close and safe and warm within his shadows,

to press his lips to ventricles, atriums,

to trip on the word love as it echoes in Dean’s inertia.

 

In the whirl of chaos and sound,

Castiel realises that he does not know what will happen to  _him_

if Dean dies – if he’ll fade or cut out or

follow Dean’s gravity upwards, downwards…

maybe he will finally,

finally take this body for his own

but he doesn’t want this body

without Dean inside it.

 

Castiel has died before but not

like this

 

voices –

chanting shouting praying  _praying_

when the body on the floor knows better than anyone

that the Almighty will not pick up the phone

and that there will be no surge of heat to save the day,

that it all simply depends on a beautiful, aging boy

and the strength to climb back to his feet and keep going.

 

voices –

_an ambulance is on its way_

_hold on, sir, you’ll be okay_

_do we have a next-of-kin?_

_does anyone know who he is?_

and  _yes,_  Castiel says,

his breath curling –  _I do –_

 

_his name is Dean Winchester:_

_named for his grandmother, named for the gun_

_lost his father for nothing and his mother too young_

_his brother’s a weight and a rock and a rung_

_he was Icarus falling in love with the sun_

_he has a freckle, a kiss, on the tip of his thumb_

_and ten thousand sins he can burn with his tongue_

_bites his lip before whiskey; sucks it in before rum_

_never played guitar but he’ll still try to strum_

_he’ll dance when he cooks; when he dances, he’ll hum_

_pull me into his chest, sell a kiss for a song_

_lost his brother too often, lost his faith in the one_

_who could string up waxed feathers and carry him on._

Castiel says,

his breath shortening -

_his name is Dean Winchester_

_and I would give my six billion years of servitude_

_for one more hour of stillness_

_inside his bones._

On a Friday morning,

under the stuttering kiss of a defibrillator,

Dean dies

 

and Castiel wonders if this

 

all this

 

was the mistake

 

or if it was the best thing

he ever did.

**VII**

**The Lightening**

A threadbare prophet sits back in his loveseat,

fingers twitching on the rim of his glass, drags a hand

over the scruff of his beard, the ebb of his hairline.

He sets his pen down on the scuffed desktop

and wonders when he got so old

or so tired.

 

Chuck Shirley knows everything that has happened.

That is his job.

 

He knows about Death and the old cream car;

the shrapnel boy, the broken bird;

the love that could not let go.

He knows about the earth still spinning;

the tattered coat, the cardboard box;

the funeral pyre curling smoke and dreams.

He knows about the beautiful girl all smiles and domesticity

and the crystal wings that shattered under impact

and the dragging, bleeding crawl

to the first safe place to be found,

regardless of whether that shelter was tucked

between the third and fourth ribs

he sewed closed in the first place.

Chuck knows everything that has happened

but he does not know

how it ends.

 

He thinks that he should pray for the seizure to show him the happy ever after,

that little corner of paradise built for backyards and bedposts and morning-breath kisses,

but he knows too well how the universe works and that

prayer is futile.

 

He knocks back the last half measure,

wincing as the poison hits his throat,

and without so much as a twitch or an ache,

he falls asleep.

 

The things that follow are disjointed, indistinct,

blurry with alcohol

or sunlight.

 

There is a garden, straight-backed tulips,

tomatoes twisting brightly around neatly-painted posts,

soil freshly turned, warm and balmy with rain,

the chatter of young children —

 

then, a  _crackle_

a pictorial judder,

like the spluttersnarling lopsided waver

of a badly-tuned TV—

 

and a pretty girl and a dirty bar,

unpolished tables complete with beer-rings and peanut salt,

the thumping growl of Styx, the raucous unbroken laughter of

boys, brothers, too young for the drink they’re gasping down—

 

_cracklesnap—_

hiss and a spin—

 

and a field, an open stretch of dry scrubland,

meadowlark alighting in slow-motion,

wings lashing out with graceful fury to lift

 

and an old dim ghost in a beat-up coat stands

swaying in the limbs and lungs where he began

dark hair

blue eyes

blood a warm grease

on his upper lip

and dripping off his chin.

 

Heaven is an artificial construct,

no more than a greenhouse for

pretty idle crickets and the lilies

where they made their beds,

once upon a time.

 

Heaven is no place for little wayward angels.

 

Castiel is shaking and tired and collapsing

inwards from the very weight of holding still

in a body that is not his

in a world where he shouldn’t exist

but there are thinning tendrilsof who he was

still breathing up gunpowder tempests

in a boy he raised from the ache and flex

of the devil’s cunning thumb

and he is looking

for him.

 

He doesn’t have very much time.

 

there’s the spinning the spinning the

_humhowlcracklesnap_

and the  _jolt_ —

 

and every bright and baby soul

bucks to hurl him out, screams white and wild,

but the storm of blood inside his chest,

rising in his throat and on his lips,

is only cells and tissue and darkness, and he

 

holds on tight

 

and there

 

in the field,

is the scatter-smiled picnic,

August 12th, 1982

 

warm smiles, cold chicken sandwiches

a cicada humming, tangled in Mary’s hair

John, an ordinary hero,

and Dean—

 

the memory man

kingfisher-catcher

storm-shelter hull for body-snatchers

the earthen hands full-body laughter

the hips the heart the home

 

 **—** who feels the shuddershake in his skeleton like a screaming

 

and he stands and he turns

and he looks.

 

They do not speak.

 

If Chuck Shirley were to tell this story after all,

he would talk about

 

the hummingbird the heap of rocks

the singing sea the evergreen

the baby child who could be king of all

and the crippled thing who crowned him so

with black ash footprints,

three-pronged, on his brow

and the word  _always_ catching in a songless throat

 

—or something

like that—

 

but Chuck isn’t telling this story;

he is only

breathing it – and

with the must of his couch against his cheek,

the sizzling slice of cheap whiskey,

it could be

anything

 

and so there is just Castiel and Dean

ten feet apart in a bright emptiness,

in a scrubland in a silence in a dream

not touching

 

because this is a dream and

they are concrete

_somewhere_

if not in a prophet’s living room

and they are built of more than

lullabies and darkened rooms.

 

Since the dawn of the finding days,

the weary road and winding days,

the careful grip and grinding days -

they have been beyond words

and so, now,

ten feet divided

feels no more a canyon

than the space between their lips

when they used to breathe dusty and even and slow.

 

 _help—_ is the hot drip of blood on loose soil

_but I don’t know how—_ is the set of Dean’s jaw

_please—_ is the breaking, the gunshot recoil,

of ankles and kneecaps and death’s hungry maw

_I can’t—_ is the howling, the curl of Dean’s fists

_I’m fading—_  is the crease of Castiel’s brow

_just stay—_ is the wishbone sucked dry of a wish

and the evermore leeching the now.

 

When they finally do speak

it is tripping and stumbling on unfamiliar consonants

and the stub grass of harvest under their feet

 

ten feet apart.

 

_I remember everything,_

Castiel says, desperate in the eight feet.

 

_I remember everything,_

Dean echoes, urgent in the six feet.

_Dean oh Dean,_ Castiel says,

close to weeping in the four feet,

_I remember everything_

_but I am starting to_

_forget_

 

and Dean,

legs near-failing in the two feet

and the one foot

and the lessening inches

says,

 

_don’t_

_ever--_

Dean is the one

who is dead

 

and yet

 

Castiel is the one

who crumples to his knees

who shudders and shatters and falls into dust

who disintegrates from toes to ankles

mote by mote by

mournful note

 

and yet

 

Dean is the one

who falls forward in echo

knees bruising purple

and he lifts his hand in prayer or poetry

to close the

distance

 

and press their foreheads tight together

as if to sink back into skulls and skin

_I love you I love you I love you_

and reach out all starswept Midas hands

each for the other

 

_I love you I love you I love you_

and then  
they fall apart.

 

In a little town just south of the sun,

a threadbare prophet jerks jolts

and rolls over onto his left hand

where, later, he will have

pins and needles.

 

He knows everything that has ever happened

 

but the dream is flickering out

and the morning residue of it when he picks up a pen

will be:

 

_we are alright_

and he won’t even be sure what that means.

Another glass of whiskey,

As for the rest—

whether their arms grew heavy  and thankful with paradise,

with kisses and everyday sins;

whether they crackled and faded from spectrums

into warped photo albums meaning less than the moments they snatched;

whether death was a darkness into which they both fell,

Dean’s body packed up neat in a box for the beautiful girl

with ghosts howling silent thunder inside him;

whether a battered old man on a boulevard,

apples and oranges rolling in the gutter,

will start and heave and sit up  _changed_ —

 

that is down to Death and the old cream car.

 

Chuck Shirley does not know what has happened

 

but there was a hummingbird and

a heap of rocks

 

and somewhere in the shards of dawn

a bird is taking flight

and a man is

waking.

 


End file.
